Five hundred kilometers away, the No. 3 gathering place.

"I want three chocolate loaves and two brioche breads, how much does it cost?"

"Bread? - You? In a narrow bakery filled with the smell of baking on the main thoroughfare, the fat-headed, big-eared, oily fat boss wiped the sweat from his forehead with a white towel and carefully looked at the customer in front of him with a scrutinizing gaze.

The guy wore a red cloak that had faded a little from the paste, and his face was mysteriously covered by a mask, except for a few small bangs and two shiny black eyes peeking out from under the hat - judging by her voice and size, the boss estimated that it was a young girl - maybe she had run away from home, or she might have been kicked out of the house by her parents, but in any case she did not look like a rich man who could afford to buy bread.

The boss narrowed his eyes, and there was an angry look on his fat face. "Damn garbage, go beg elsewhere, I don't have anything to give you here!"

He remembered something, the horizontal flesh on his face shook twice, took a breath, and continued to sneer, "Maybe there will be something in the dirty trash can at the back door that you homeless stray dogs need, haha!" ”

"Smack!"

A hideous-looking automatic pistol was slammed against the spotless glass counter, interrupting his barking laughter, and the stupid thing nearly fell to the ground with a weak leg.

This pistol is exactly the "nail" cherished by the little red riding hood lady.

"I warn you, there are security forces patrolling the neighborhood 24 hours a day!" The boss stiffened his neck and frightened fiercely: "If you are caught by these vicious scum, you will have to be locked up in the dark dungeon until death!" ”

He swallowed, and seeing that Little Red Riding Hood didn't speak, he softened his tone again, and a disgusting smile appeared on his greasy face, "If you leave here now, I might be able to pretend that this didn't happen, anyway, it's just the two of us in the store now—how about it?" ”

As for letting this daring imp go afterwards? That wouldn't be possible - he'd give the old immortal vampire Ander, the captain of the vigilantes, some cigarettes and drink, so that they could take her to the dungeon and make the little naughty bastard who dared to threaten him disappear from the world forever.

"I think you're mistaken, sir." Little Red Riding Hood, who reached out and pressed the pistol, did not fear or waver in the slightest, but only stared at him with moving eyes. "I'm here to buy something. How much are three chocolate loaves and two brioche buns? ”

"Fresh chocolate bread 2...... 25 pieces of silver, 20 pieces of silver for brioche bread. The boss stared at the gun in her hand, wiped the sweat droplets oozing from her forehead with a white towel, and said with a stammer: "A piece of chocolate bread overnight is 20 silver, and the cream bread is 18 silver." ”

"Do you want fresh or overnight?" He asked like Little Red Riding Hood with a flattering expression.

"Fresh...... bar. Little Red Riding Hood blinked twice, hesitated for a moment.

"Three pieces of chocolate bread 75 silver, two pieces of cream bread 40 silver, a total of 115 silver, you take it." The fat boss took the basket handed by Little Red Riding Hood, and quickly sandwiched a few pieces of sweet, fragrant, soft, and steaming bread into it, and handed it to her.

It would be a bastard if she didn't make money, but if she couldn't get it,—— well-meaning Uncle Henry would really turn his face on the spot - oh, he meant that he would let the vigilantes subdue the robber for him after she left.

After all, this guy has a gun in his hand, and it's not a pity that those vampires of the vigilante are dead, but his life is very valuable.

"I don't have silver, can I use the coins of the Gathering Place?" Little Red Riding Hood handed out a few banknotes clutched in the palm of her hand and lined them up neatly on the counter.

The boss's brow furrowed, and he grabbed the crumpled banknotes.

"Uh-" he looked at the coin in the light, "yes, but you know the banknotes at the gathering place aren't worth much, right?" ”

"Hmm." Little Red Riding Hood answered and put away her "nails".

"That's it, don't say that my store is a big bully, 115 silver will charge you 140." The boss pulled out a ten-round bill and tossed it back to Little Red Riding Hood.

Little Red Riding Hood took the note with the heads of the deputy mayor and his wife, and carefully placed it in the inner lining of the cloak.

In order to prevent the dust along the way from staining the expensive fragrant bread, she also put a clean flower scarf on top of the basket, and then carried it to the home.

"Wait!" Little Red Riding Hood, who had pushed open the glass door and was about to leave, heard the boss's shouts, so he turned around and stopped.

The fat pig-like boss stepped out from behind the counter, grabbed two pieces of blackened bread that had been sitting for an unknown number of days, and hurriedly stuffed them into his basket. "These will be given to you to eat, and you will not be charged any money."

In fact, it is the sale of this coarse brown bread for the common people that is the main source of income for all the bakeries in the agglomeration.

She only buys these high-end breads that only the rich can enjoy, because it's the birthday of her only sister Anya – it costs almost all of Little Red Riding Hood's last time she gets paid for the outing convoy – but she thinks it's worth it.

Since her mother disappeared and her father was crushed to death by a collapsed stone while mining, her young sister has become Little Red Riding Hood's only relative - the compensation for the accident is pitiful, barely enough to sustain the two of them for two months, so Little Red Riding Hood finally relentlessly used the money to buy a second-hand automatic pistol, and slashed a few bloody gaps on her face with a scalded porcelain piece in front of the mirror alone that she could not heal in her life, and then changed it into a cloak with her mother's favorite red dress. Every day, in order to support himself and his sister, he runs through various mercenary markets.

Since then, she has no name – or rather, "Little Red Riding Hood".

"Thank you." Little Red Riding Hood thanked him earnestly.

The boss waved his hand, indicating that he didn't care.

Of course, this is not because he is kind and has changed his sex, but mainly because he is worried that this kind of uneducated mongrel from the slums will kill him - then isn't he, the black-hearted bastard who cheated her a lot of money, going to be finished?

When Little Red Riding Hood gently closed the glass door and walked out of the bakery, it was already late afternoon.

The setting sun happened to be at the left end of the wide main thoroughfare, and she only had to turn her head slightly to see the spectacular, dazzling sunset slowly sinking into the earth—it was truly beautiful, and the orange-red light that was no longer dazzling gently warmed the eye and illuminated the towering, ornate white buildings of the rich district.

Their slender shadows are stretched out like some strange, beautiful silhouettes.

But her red cloak did not match the pure white, so she glanced at it quietly and looked no more.

Pulling his hood, Little Red Riding Hood, carrying the bread, walked to the other end of the main avenue amid the great shadows and the noise of the crowd.

Little Red Riding Hood, who was hurrying down, passed through neat neighborhoods and streets, walked past bustling trade markets, and finally returned to her familiar place after passing through the stinking industrial area lined with "big chimneys" that were spewing black clouds.

This is the slum of Gathering Number Three, and just as the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen don't want to get their delicate leather boots dirty and trample on the foul-smelling wet mud of the ghetto, the scumbags of the vigilantes never appear here.

Little Red Riding Hood hurried along the road with a basket, but sometimes some hungry outcasts who were so thin that they could barely stand on their feet tried to snatch the tempting soft bread from her hand - most of them would be intimidated by the "nails" in her hand, and finally watch Little Red Riding Hood away in a difficult swallowing motion, while the madmen who threatened to no avail and lost their minds were rewarded with a few bullets by Little Red Riding Cycle.

In order not to leave any trouble, Little Red Riding Hood would also poke a few more fashionable holes in their flesh with a knife in a pool of blood.

Bender was right, hydroponic technology had nothing to do with them the poor.

Constrained by the scarcity of electricity, more than a dozen hydroponic tanks have been built that use electricity from the thermal power plants that run the industrial estates, but instead from the power grids of the rich – but the power of the rich has never been rich, even if a few hydro-generators have recently been added, but only enough to sustain their daily consumption.

The leaders of the Gathering had anticipated that the power shortage would limit the spread of hydroponics, so the convoy returned with only about 40 kilograms of hydroponic nutrient solution in plastic buckets – the good news is that some radical leaders have recently issued notices planning to recruit men to retake the power generation area occupied by corpses and bugs, so as to build a large number of these wonderful hydroponic tanks that can greatly relieve the food pressure at Gathering Point 3. - Well, hopefully it's going well.

It is said that the crops grown in the hydroponic tanks grew much faster than the leaders of the agglomeration had predicted, and that they were extremely vigorous, and the plants were much stronger than those grown in ordinary soil.

It was foreseeable that at the end of the short growing season, the newborn babies in the soil would bring a good harvest - this was all told to her by Aman, who worked on the plantation, and was whipped several times by the foreman, because she accidentally left a few dirty black handprints on the glass while lying on the glass to observe the crops growing in the hydroponic tank.

Little Red Riding Hood walked for a long time on the dirt roads of the slums, with a foul smell and perhaps a little excrement, before standing in front of her home.

It's a small five-storey building that stands out from the crowd in a crowd of low shacks – and one of the safest shelters in the slums – or at least it ensures that you don't fall asleep and be stripped of your money and thrown into the gutter.

Of course, don't expect to rent a place at a low price, but only then can she initially ensure her sister's safety, so that she can go out and participate in some dangerous operations without distraction.

The caretaker of the small building was a bald man who sat on a tattered, old couch sitting downstairs from morning till night flipping through magazines. Little Red Riding Hood only knew that the bald head's name was Mark, and as for the full name, probably no one in the building knew it.

Although the scar on Mark's forehead makes him look as fierce and scary as the villains in Pixon films, he is actually surprisingly good, and has reached out more than once in the most difficult times of their lives.

The smell of chocolate bread and brioche bread was very gluttonous, so Mark could already smell the smell of food from a dozen meters away, which was completely different from the stench wafting through the slums.

He put down the erotic magazine in his hand, and rarely took the initiative to greet the returning Little Red Riding Hood: "Wow, look! - Man, Little Red Riding Hood. You're not going to sell your own sister, are you? ”

"Eat, Mark." Little Red Riding Hood lifted the scarf and handed Mark a chunky piece of chocolate bread—she knew that the bald man liked to eat the kind of sweet that made people panic.

Mark was startled by the sweet chocolate bread that Little Red Riding Hood handed him, weighing about a pound, and almost jumped out of the leather sofa when he saw that her basket was full of all kinds of delicious but expensive bread.

"Ah...... You're not really going to sell your sister, are you?! Or did you rob the bakery and now you're back to pack up? His face was full of fear.

"I bought it at my own expense!" Little Red Riding Hood was a little angry because of the inexplicable wrong, "Today is Anya's birthday!" ”

"Oh, that's no wonder." Mark shrugged his shoulders, already greedily tearing off a large piece of chocolate bread with a rich aroma and stuffing it into his mouth.

Little Red Riding Hood shook her head slightly, kindly reminding him before entering the hallway, "If you pay attention, you'll find that your little yellow-book has been lying on the mud floor for a while, Mr. Mark." ”

"Ah, my darling!" Mark almost squirted all the bread out of his mouth.